Florida politics, policy, and plain-spoken analysis by Gary Fineout.

June 20, 2012

The long and winding investigation finally reaches its end

Some 10 months after Gov. Rick Scott ordered an investigation into how and why emails were lost and deleted during his transition period state law-enforcement authorities have concluded that they have found no evidence that anyone did anything wrong.

A story about the conclusions reached in the report can be found here.

The report in essence says that top campaign officials such as Scott campaign manager Susie Wiles and Harris Media adviser Amy Brown knew that the Scott transition team email accounts were being shut down but no one realized that emails would not be preserved.

"Information obtained by FDLE during the course of this investigation would indicate that the decision to close the scottransition.com email accounts were made by Susan Wiles and Amy Brown without consulting Governor Soctt or any other GSTT (Gov. Scott Transition Team) member and with no intention of deleting data,'' states the report.

The report also says that top transition team attorneys such as Chris Kise and Pat Gleason told transition team members and Scott that the records were public but that Kise and Gleason did not receive the January 2011 email telling everyone that the transition email accounts were being shut down.

The backstory here is that Scott ordered the investigation after The Tampa Bay Times first reported the emails were missing. That was followed by Associated Press stories that showed that some of the emails not initially turned over included ones sent directly from former Gov. Jeb Bush to Scott and his team. These emails included advice he gave to the governor and an email to Wiles where Bush complained about some of the people that Scott was firing in the governor's office.

But more tidbits could be forthcoming since the Scott administration has decided to put anywhere from 33,000 to 50,000 pages of transition documents on its Project Sunburst website. This includes material that was recovered during the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation.